Notes toward a pedagogy of comfort: Inclusion and engagement in uncomfortable sites of teaching and learning

Accounts detailing ‘pedagogies of discomfort’ argue that unsettling the positionalities of comfortable students affords a basis for interrogating injustice. By asking comfortable students to question their privilege, pedagogies of discomfort seek to move students toward critically informed action by problematising the normative assumptions that sustain social injustice. Yet, questions remain regarding who constitutes the focus for these discomforting incursions. This paper argues that moving beyond presumptive attributions of privilege represents an important element in the enactment of inclusive modes of education that remain relevant to all students’ lives and experiences. The paper outlines an argument for a pedagogy of comfort that seeks to suspend the ascription of culpability and guilt by engaging students in critically conscious and inclusive enactments of teaching and learning that recognise schools as sites of increasing alienation and despair for all students.